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Branding Sweeteners: It takes a brand to know a brand

Only a company that understands the brands of others can really understand the importance of their own brand, and inversely, a company that understands its own brand will also understand the brands of others.

Basically, if you “get it,” then you will “get it,” and if you don’t, well, you won’t.

Here’s an image that might shed some light on it.

What you are looking at is an image of four packs of sweetener as supplied by the Olive Garden. There is no printed indication on the front as to their contents, and only a small printing (often obscured by the packaging itself, folded over it) on the back that says “SUGAR,” or “SWEETENER,” or “ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER.”

So, how would a person know which was which?

Well, Olive Garden is banking on the fact that all these sweeteners already are branded by color. The color tips at the ends (so that whichever way they get put in the sweetener holder, the color tip will be showing) are the only clear and readable indication of the contents.

White? Well, that’s SUGAR, plain and simple.

Pink? Well, that’s Sweet-n-Low or its generic equivalent of saccharine based sweetener. It’s always been pink, to the point where people would even ask for “some of the pink stuff” when they wanted it at a restaurant.

Blue? Yes, NutraSweet and their brand of Aspartame has that color locked up.

And Yellow? That’s now being branded by Sucralose.

And there you have it. The Olive Garden “gets” the brands of others, so you can be pretty sure that they get their own brand too.